Highlight #1: At our first workshop we had two guest speakers from different Mi’gmaq communities—Bernard Jerome from Gesgapegiag and Jaime Battiste from Eskasoni. The speakers related their personal experiences with the language, and how speaking Mi’gmaq has influenced their life. Many students and Elders were happy to see the speeches given half in Mi’gmaq and half in English. Travis Wysote noted, “The speakers were eloquent, a natural occurrence when our People speak from their hearts.”

Highlight #2: The goal of the workshop was not only to inform community members about resources available for Mi’gmaq language-learning, but to foster dialogue between Elders and young language learners. In the second half of our workshop, the audience formed groups for discussion and talked about the state of the language in the community. Afterwards, students were asked to briefly summarize what was discussed in their group.

Students and Elders talking about the language. Photo by Janine Metallic.

“The part that I enjoyed the most was the discussions. I loved hearing what the elders in my group had to say. […] I realized after hearing what the elders had to say in our discussion group was that they regret not passing on the language and are genuinely afraid that the language will someday soon be lost. They also thought that the youth are not interested in learning Mi’gmaq which I can imagine discouraged them a bit. I don’t think I would have ever known how the elders felt towards the language had I not attended this workshop and they would not have known how us youth felt. The assumptions that we had about each other were wrong”

Highlight #3: Fun booths about a variety of topics were set up around the venue.

“The booths were interesting and ranged from more formal ones to informal ones and the information they shared was of critical importance with regards to language retention and language revitalization. Perhaps this was why the discussions were so lively.” (Travis Wysote)

We hope you can make it to this year’s workshop! Help us make language learning fun; bring your kids, your family, your pets!

Instagram – @learnmigmaq weekly videos with vocabulary and dialogue in the Mi’gmaq language. Also check out Savvy Simon’s videos on instagram (@msnativewarrior). L’nuisi, it’s that easy!

Listuguj Mi’gmaw Language Club – Weekly conversation group meeting every Thursday at 6pm at the Listuguj Education Directorate. All activities are solely in Mi’gmaq – a great way to practice conversation in Mi’gmaq.

Mi’gmaq Language Summer Workshop 2- Check out our webpage under the workshop section for more information. This event will take place August 5th at the Listuguj Bingo Hall.

How to get involved

Be a part of our social media team! For Mi’gmaq videos, posts or pictures just use the hashtag #SpeakMikmaq or #SpeakMigmaq

A few weeks ago Janine and I attended Dr. Lindsay Morcom’s seminar on “Language Preservation, Education, and Diversity”. The following are some highlights from her seminar.

The medium is the message. We view the education system as a system that can tell you what is useful and what is important. If your language is not part of the equation , then you are told that it is not important. This was the way schools used to rob language from children in the past. But, by the same reasoning, there is is no reason that a school system in the hands of Native people shouldn’t be able to counteract the damage inflicted in the past.

There is a high correlation between immersion programming and self esteem (collective and personal). Taylor & Wright (1995) (see attached article) conducted a study with Inuit, White, and mixed-heritage participants to see the connection between heritage language instruction and self-esteem. The results showed that early heritage language education had a positive effect on personal and collective self-esteem of minority-language students. This has many long-term benefits, such as a stronger sense of personal identity, stronger connection to collective identity (feeling like you belong to a group), and positive impacts on academic success.

Aboriginal language immersion programs have an important role in language revitalization, maintenance, and education. Usborne et al. (2011) (see attached article) compared a strong Mi’gmaq immersion program with a Mi’gmaq as a second language (L2) program, and found that students in the immersion program not only had stronger Mi’kmaq language skills compared to students in the L2 program, but students within both programs ultimately had the same level of English. This ultimately shows that learning a Native language at a young age does not negatively impact the process of mainstream language-learning.

The type of language programming (immersion, L2 ) should be decided on a case-by-case basis, as it is more of a continuum: programs of study in the language, programs of study for the language, or a combination of both. Factors that should be considered: what is the goal of the community? what is the history of the community with the language? what is the status of the language now? (e.g. is it used everyday in the community? are there many fluent speakers?) Illustrated with 3 case studies: Pokomchi’, Dene, and Michif.

Native language programming allows students to learn through a culturally-appropriate lens, which is important. Just as everyone has different learning styles (visual, aural, tactile) a culturally-appropriate lens can be conducive to learning and can help propagate traditional practices, values, etc.

In the three days of sessions, I went to a whole lot of very exciting talks. Here are my notes from some (but not all) of the ones that I enjoyed the most!

Being Cree in the 21st Century Through Language, Literacy, and Culture: Iyiniwoskinîkiskwewak (Young Women) Take on the Challenges. Stelómethet Ethel B. Gardner, Heather Blair, and Shelby Laframboise-Helgeson (University of Alberta)

Canadian Indigenous Languages and Literacy Development Institute (CILLDI) runs annually to help show speakers of Indigenous languages new strategies for teaching, documenting, and looking at their languages. While the Institute was running, speakers would travel to Edmonton to take part, often bringing young/adolescent family members with them.

The first group of young women who participated wrote a belief statement: Young Aboriginal Women: fun, cooperative, caring, respectful, responsible, strong, talented, essential and contributing members of our communities!

Since 2008, the Language Warriors (Taiaiake Alfred’s term) of this program have stuck by this mission statement.

The camp runs for 8 days, engaging the young women through many media and activities: creative theatre, storytelling, woodworking, traditional and contemporary arts, computers and new technology, swimming, rock climbing, and teachings from elders.

The talk ended by giving some quotes from the young women who had done the camp, which I foolishly didn’t write down. One of them spoke about how she felt prepared to start grade 7 as a new person and a stronger leader. It was all very uplifting!

Collaborations and Connections between an Aboriginal Organisation and Endangered Language Speakers: Interpreting and Translating in the Kimberley Region of Western Australia. Thomas Saunders (Kimberley Interpreting Service Aboriginal Corporation)

The Kimberley has members of all 5 of Western Australia’s language families–it’s a very linguistically diverse region! It’s therefore very important for important documents (e.g. health- and service-related notices, court documents, etc) to be available in a wide variety of languages.

They focus on court, police, and medical work, and provide real recognition for speakers’ skills by employing speakers to work on translation and interpretation in their native languages.

This presentation was very interesting to me because it was one of the few that wasn’t affiliated with an academic institution. It was a great example of endangered languages being used for practical, everyday purposes, and speakers having their expertise respected in the tangible sphere of employment. Particularly when many speakers of endangered languages have faced discrimination and institutional barriers from industry in the past, it’s nice to see a bit of turn-around.

Standardization of the Inuit Language in Canada. Jeela Qiliqti Palluq-Cloutier (Inuit Uqausinginnik Taiguusiliuqtiit, Government of Nunavut)

Aqqaluk Lynge: “No other organization in this world, no one else can save your language for you.”

This presentation was discussing the difficulties of making one standard orthography for the Inuit language.

There is a dialect spectrum in the Inuit language–generally different dialects are mutually understandable out loud, but each variation comes with another new way of writing, so often written documents can seem very opaque from one region to another.

The presentation ended with call for research to be done to find what would be the best way to compromise to one orthography about which there can be consensus. How does a group negotiate intuitive spelling (matching closely your personal spoken dialect) vs. broad accessibility across the language community?

I’d be very curious to hear what you think the best option for this situation is! Meet me in the comments section?

Looking at themes of cultural continuity and self-esteem, where the outcomes of interest are verbal skills, prosocial outcomes, and hyperactivity/inattention.

Kids participating in cultural activities and language have great outcomes for verbal and behavioural skills. Kids learning Aboriginal languages are also doing better at school and looking forward to school more.

While survey questions can only give a vague and extremely generalized view of any situation, the presentation was adamant that such quantitative data could open the door for qualitative data to follow.

during the Q&A afterwards, one person brought up the idea of “language kits” midwives can give to expectant mothers, so that even if they are not themselves speakers they might have a resource for the language (songs and such). Another person said that Bernie Francis has a kit like this for Mi’gmaq!

This presentation talked about two immersion schools, one Mi’gmaw and one Wolastoqi/Maliseet.

Eskasoni has had a K-3 Mi’gmaw immersion program for 10 years; Tobique has had a K4 & K5 Maliseet immersion program for 3 years.

In Tobique, lunchtime was a great opportunity for contact between immersion students, sitting together and speaking in the language. The program also encouraged a strong link between school and Elder’s Centre, taking the kids there to visit on a regular basis.

Initially, some had been afraid that the bridging years between immersion and English education would reveal failures in the students’ English-language abilities. But when they looked at the actual numbers, a very different story emerged:

Of the 81 kids in grade 7: 16 are former immersion, 65 non-immersion.

When it comes to reading levels, the 40 students reading reading below XYZ (the provincial standard for that age level) were all pure English-educated–no immersion students had below XYZ competence.

Further, 13 students were reading at the Z level (the highest): 12 of those were students from the immersion class!

The bridging years had done their work and the immersion students were all caught up, often with a lot of enthusiasm for school that propelled their achievements.

Overall, these two schools found very powerful values of fluency, identity, and student achievement linked with their immersion programs. Very inspiring!

Using all the Pieces to Solve the Puzzle: the Importance of Aboriginal Language Assessment in Child Populations. Lori Morris & Marguerite MacKenzie (Université de Québec à Montréal; Memorial University)

Since normally-developing bilingual kids can look like kids with language difficulties, this presentation focused on the importance of measuring language use in all the languages spoken by a child, not just the dominant one in which schooling is taking place. Challenge: It’s hard to distribute tests between 2 languages.

3 towns: Pessamit (QC), Sheshashit (NL), Natuashish (NL). The language context in these three towns is “diglossic with a winner and a loser”–two languages are spoken, but the colonial language (French or English) seems to be overpowering Innu in each town.

The researchers do a longitudinal assessment from when the children first start at school through their elementary years. The first cohort they worked with is (I think) 10 years old now. They tested breadth and use of vocabulary in both the colonial language and Innu.

The general pattern they found is that when you start school, if you’re good in one language, you’re often good in both languages.

The students’ abilities have shown gains since the original measures (as is to be expected). What wasn’t expected was that… “As Innu gets better, so does French.” For the first year, language skills correlated significantly and positively! But once kids have been in school for a while, the positive correlations fade away.

The take-home message was the benefit of performing analysis of linguistic competence in both languages, not just in one or the other. Some students who would have been classified as having abnormal language development were actually very typical bilinguals; others who needed additional teacher assistance were able to get it tailored to their own needs.

There were a lot of other very good talks at this conference (including one by some names that may be familiar: Sarkar, Metallic, Baker, Lavoie, & Strong-Wilson!) but this post is already very-very long. I’d be happy to talk with anybody in the comments section about this post, or anything else mentioned in the FEL program that I didn’t talk about here. Thanks for reading!

The keynote speakers on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were all phenomenal, providing a lot of insight from a wide variety of experiences.

Nuk’wantwal’ – Collaborative and Community-centered approaches to language vitalization from an Indigenous perspective. Lorna Williams(Canada Research Chair, Indigenous Knowledge and Learning, University of Victoria)

Nuk’wantwal': to help one another, to ask to help. This talk was about her work and experiences in language revitalization. She spoke about…

biased & racialized demands for accountability in funding

countering colonial/majority language bias

the fact that people who come to help have differing goals from each other: “Outside experts can fragment communities.” “When we choose to help, we need to be responsible for the kind of help we give.” “Each of us needs to be willing to be changed.”

the importance of fighting against the age-based stratification that is so prevalent in Canadian society, making it so that we see a lot of our peers and very little of our elders and juniors. The Mentor-Apprentice program is one strategy useful in countering this stratification.

establishing speaker communities as safe spaces for the language

the language as the voice of the land

support for parents of children in immersion programs–children would learn stories in school, and go home to tell the same story to their families. This strategy helps ensure the language doesn’t get locked up inside the walls of the school, but lives throughout the community.

for Arctic communities, there are huge practical obstacles to long-distance collaboration! Even just organizing a conference call means juggling a huge number of different time zones. Getting together in person for a meeting requires even more incredible feats of organization. (Thank goodness for the Internet.)

current projects are prioritizing an Indigenous framework for language vitality assessment, as well as matters of language acquisition (a lengthy process) and language policy in each of the member countries.

In the question period, she also briefly discussed that an ideological shift away from monolingualism is necessary! Multilingualism is (and always has been) doable and is currently the best way forward.

there are two websites for the ALI: the older one is here and the new one (still under construction) is here. Please do check them out!

Protective effects of language learning, use and culture on the health and well-being of Indigenous people in Canada.Onawa McIvor(University of Victoria)

speaking to the strong link between culture and health (and land & health).

there is not a ton of research done on language as it interacts with health. the most prevalent themes in the existing literature are of Indigenous languages as barriers to health outcomes for monolingual speakers, making it harder to access medical services if you don’t operate in a majority language as well as your Indigenous one.

however, when you look at the positive themes, and allow for multilingualism in your conception of Indigenous language speakers, the positive links between language and health are very present.

Hallett, Chandler, & Lalonde (2007) look at language and suicide rates in British Columbia, finding that communities with high language knowledge also had low suicide rates. (PDF of that paper is here)

Ball & Moselle (2013) looked at the First Nations Regional Health Survey, and Aboriginal Head Start. From the paper… “The purpose of the report is to bring together current conceptualizations and empirical support for the importance of language and culture in Aboriginal children’s wellness, education, and opportunities for quality of life.”

she ended her talk with a simple recommendation for language revitalization: take it seriously. Things the government could do to help included funding language projects, and making Indigenous languages at least regionally co-official (as in the NWT). At one point she added, “The way that Aboriginal language revitalization is funded in Canada is nothing short of a disgrace.” Strong words, and a strong call for action!

Thanks for reading–I’m very lucky to have heard these speakers talk, and I wanted to share as much of that experience as I could. Please let me know if any of the links are broken!

I’m very much a movie person, so I loved having the chance to watch We Still Live Here/Âs Nutayuneân a second time. If you click the title, you can watch clips from the video. The whole film isn’t free online anywhere, but you can buy it on iTunes! The story of Jessie Little Doe-Baird and the Wampanoag who worked together to wake their language back up after 6 generations is purely inspirational, a total must-watch.

In the context of a conference that focused on “endangered” languages, it felt so hopeful and essential to get the reminder than languages don’t simply go extinct like species of plants or animals. Animals like the sea mink are never coming back, but thanks to historical documents, speakers of related languages, dedication, hard work, and collaboration, Wampanoag is being spoken again in Massachusetts. There were more than a few damp eyes in the room during our screening, let me tell you that.

A clip from Takuginai (Look Here), aka the Inuit Sesame Street. The Inuit Broadcasting Corporation has been running it since 1986!! We were lucky to have two of the co-producers (Mike Kerr and Cynthia Pitsiulak) come and talk to us about the program, and about IBC in general. (I will admit I daydreamed for a few minutes about a Mi’gmaw Takuginai… The Listuguj Education Directorate definitely has the puppets, anyway!)

October 1-4 was the Foundation for Endangered Languages annual conference in Ottawa! Gretchen made a blog post about it while we were there, and did a lot of good work helping to fill up the #FEL2013 Twitter tag with some interesting quotes from talks. It’s a bit late, but I thought it would be nice to do a round-up post on the blog too, like this one I did after ICLDC this spring. I started writing it, then realized that it was getting tremendously long! So instead, I’ll make a bunch of shorter posts, and this central one will link to each of them in turn. So far there are three posts planned–hopefully I can keep it to that!

By now most of my family, friends, and acquaintances are familiar with my views based on the things I write. I go on and on (and on and on) about the importance of maintaining environmental integrity in order to preserve our language and culture. And while environmental integrity is still a serious concern of mine, I wish to bring shift my attention towards language and culture.

We Mi’gmaq have been resisting colonial encroachment for centuries. We have fought colonialism and assimilation into the Canadian body politic. We have fought and continue to fight the exploitation of our lands and resources – speaking up on behalf of all our relations. While the fight against these forces has many battlegrounds, such as the forests, the waters, social media and the courts, the fight to preserve language is within: within our Nation, within our communities, within our families, and within ourselves. If the integrity of our territory is diminished, our language and culture are diminished with it. I have always asserted this. But the inverse has recently been brought to my attention: without Mi’gmaq language informing our values, we will partake in the destruction of our own territory. Indeed, we are now beginning to see Mi’gmaq individuals and communities using their lands and waters in ways that our ancestors would find objectionable. This change in values towards the integrity of our territory is a reflection of the lasting legacy of colonialism and assimilation, only hastened by the loss of Mi’gmaq language speakers.

The result is that we Mi’gmaq must make that extra effort to keep the language and culture alive. The only thing holding us back is ourselves. And I understand if this is a touchy subject. I don’t want to put blame on anyone or make people feel shame. Quite the opposite – I want nothing more than to see Mi’gmaq who are beyond proud of who they are and what they have, can, and will accomplish.

I wish to speak to the importance of a recent accomplishment. From my perspective, the Mi’gmaq Language Summer Workshop on Tuesday, August 6, 2013, was an absolute success. The speakers were eloquent, a natural occurrence when our People speak from their hearts. The food was fantastic. The booths were interesting and ranged from more formal ones to informal ones and the information they shared was of critical importance with regards to language retention and language revitalization. Perhaps this was why the discussions were so lively.

There were two things about this gathering that really caught my attention. The first was witnessing the Mi’gmaq Immersion Nursery students singing traditional songs with Pu’gwales, a local drum group. Not only are these children basically the cutest things ever, it was more than heartwarming to see them take pride in their accomplishments as the next generation of Mi’gmaq speakers. The other thing that piqued my interest was the interaction with Elders during the discussions towards the end of the workshop. I was fortunate enough to have been a moderator/note-taker for a group of roughly a dozen Mi’gmaq women.

I learned a lot about how the Elders feel about the language and how the Youth have or have not taken to it. One discussion in particular touched me on a personal level. Without sharing any names, I would like to relate what I have learned with readers. One of my relations talked about how she was confronted by her daughter one day. The daughter resentfully asked the mother why she had failed to pass her native language onto her at a young age. The mother was left speechless. It caught me off-guard to hear her say such a thing because my experience mirrors that of the mother – not the daughter.

Readers who know me may find this strange because I’m only 24 years young, but take note of what I am about to say. It is my experience, and possibly that of other Youth, that Elders sometimes resent the Youth for not already knowing the language. So we have arrived at a situation where Elders sometimes feel like the Youth resent them for not teaching them the language, while Youth sometimes feel as if the Elders resent them for not having learned the Mi’gmaq language. The level of misunderstanding between these two groups is the result of a breakdown in communication. This realization has bothered me since.

While learning the language in the most practical sense is vitally important, learning to forgive each other inter-generationally is a form of healing that I suspect will facilitate language learning and retention. All I can say is that this language workshop was a step in the right direction and it is critical as Mi’gmaq that we organize and participate in more of them. I believe that the importance of the Mi’gmaq language is the one thing we can all agree upon. And while many of us are busy becoming experts in our respective fields, we can all become experts of the Mi’gmaq language together. An “expert” is defined, by the way, as someone who has spent 10,000 hours on a subject. If you were to take a one-hour Mi’gmaq class every day for a year, it would take over 27 years to “officially” become an expert. While I love my Mi’gmaq classes, I think we can all agree that 27 years is unrealistic.

It is incumbent upon us to seek out avenues whereby we can integrate language into our daily lives. We need to take this issue to formal avenues such as Chief and Council, but also realize that the responsibility lies with us to raise the issue in informal avenues. There’s many ways to do this. Allow me to humbly suggest one. It would be great if people could just greet each other in Mi’gmaq. Those who already speak might discover other speakers and network with them, but speakers might also discover that there are people (Youth, such as myself, in particular) who are trying to learn. Learners need to hear Mi’gmaq spoken to them. They need to be prompted to listen. They need to struggle to understand. They also need to be prompted to speak. This effort can only serve to strengthen our language, our culture, and the bond we share as citizens of this paradise we call Mi’gmagi. Wela’lioq!

Although I enjoyed everything at the workshop, the part that I enjoyed the most was the discussions. I loved hearing what the elders in my group had to say. I always assumed that if the elders didn’t think Mi’gmaq was not important enough for their children to know and speak, then it wasn’t important enough to bother learning. My grandparents gave my father the language but he didn’t give it to me and because this is the case for majority of the people in my generation it’s easy to see how our precious language could be lost in just one generation. I realized after hearing what the elders had to say in our discussion group was that they regret not passing on the language and are genuinely afraid that the language will someday soon be lost. They also thought that the youth are not interested in learning Mi’gmaq which I can imagine discouraged them a bit. I don’t think I would have ever known how the elders felt towards the language had I not attended this workshop and they would not have known how us youth felt. The assumptions that we had about each other were wrong. They do value and care about the language and so do we. We are interested in learning Mi’gmaq and they’re so happy to see that we are taking the initiative. We want to learn our language and they’re willing to meet us halfway if they see that we are trying. I feel more comfortable and more at ease speaking Mi’gmaq to them knowing that they want us to learn. It was nice to clear up the misunderstandings and bring the gap between the generations a little closer.